Hi guys and gals,
as you may or may not know, I have made a whole bunch of films in the past two years that I intended to enter in various competitions. Except I never got round to telling you all about how it all turned out! Except for Maron and Sean, they know everything (I think).

Anyway let's begin. I reported on the success of The Copernican System back at refugee camp, basically if you've forgotten then I made it to enter a competition called the Eureka Prizes Sleek Geek's Science Award. Basically you have to make a 3 minute long film explaining something about science. Eventually I was chosen to be a finalist so I got flown with my dad to the Eureka Awards in Sydney, which are sort of like the Oscars for science in Australia. The dinner and experience was great, but what's more, I won first place, winning $2000 and a $500 book voucher for a Sydney bookshop. My school also won $2000. And I got the nice chunk of perspex below. The win was also mentioned alongside those of actual scientists in several newspapers.

Then, in November, I was rung up by The Age (the main newspaper here in Melbourne) because they wanted to include me in their monthly magazine, which has a special issue each year celebrating 100 influential people from Melbourne. So I ended up in the magazine alongside other well known local people like Gabriella Cilmi, Cut Copy, and various sportspeople, architects, scientists, writers, journalists, musicians, etc. etc. You can see my little section of it here.

Then later in the year a friend told me about the Optus/Bell Shakespeare Makeascene competition, where you have to make a (very) short film or a picture giving a visual interpretation of one of 5 Shakespeare quotes. I entered my short film based on a Romeo and Juliet quote. There were prizes for best overall winner, a people's choice winner (ie people vote over the internet, but this was screwy since the person who won got an unbelievably high number of votes and their video was really bad) and junior and senior runner-ups. To my great surprise, I ended up winning the overall prize! ($5000 and an iPhone, plus $10 000 for my school). I was actually really surprised, since there were some really good painted entries. Anyway, people from Optus and Bell Shakespeare came to an assembly at my school to present a large novelty cheque (plus the real one I hope). Me, my dad, my principal and his wife also got free tickets to see a Bell Shakespeare production.

Earlier this year I made a short film for a small competition being run by Boost, an Australian chain that sells smoothies, soups, juices, and other yummy things. Eventually I was chosen as one of 5 winners, each receiving $1000.

I think that's everything. The moral of this is that there are many opportunities out there just waiting to be seized. In this day and age of low-cost filmmaking there are more short film competitions around than ever before. So keep an eye out for them, and when you find one that looks fun, have a go, as you never know what could happen.
At the same time, in the past two years I've only been making films for competitions or schoolwork, so I think I'm going to take a break from it and make something for the fun of it alone. Winning all these competitions and getting all this exposure makes me feel a bit guilty, as there are so many others on this site who are much more talented, yet haven't won a competition before. I guess that's why I put off posting this for so long.

So look out for opportunities, I know all too well how expensive brickfilming can be as a hobby, and this is a good way to fund your "studio". At the same time, you can't expect success every time. I didn't. But you have to be in it to win it.